I'm pretty sure Duff Goldman of Ace of Cakes has a whisk tattoo.

Yeah I'm not really buying this one either; I'm not sure it necessarily translates or even implies the barefoot woman in front of a stove stereotype.

I'll bet the blue pajamas do not have staplers, telephone headsets, mugs of cold coffee, and angry co-workers embroidered on them.

In all seriousness, though: I noticed that all of the designs on the PJs are not just cooking implements, but baking implements. Any significance there?

Some people enjoy cooking (myself included), but it is a lot of work, and for people who don't enjoy it, it can be a major chore. And I don't believe it's ever appropriate to assign identities to children (i.e., "You're a cook"); let them develop their own when they're ready.

I don't think that anyone would argue that cooking (or baking) implement pajamas directly lead one to think of the “barefoot women in front of the stove stereotype.” But what is the overall message that it contributes to? Clothes for little girls are full of messages – hearts, flowers, rainbows – and they come in thematic colours – pink, purple, the occasional yellow. The same is true for boys – blue and green, trucks, puppies and spaceships.

We “gender” or kids from the moment they are born when we put them in a pink or blue hat; this starts the process of sending them signals of what it means to be a boy or a girl. These messages are added to by the toys we buy kids, the books we read to them, the way others interact with them, and all the institutions that they run into on a daily basis.

Is the little girl that wears these pajamas going to look down and think to herself “I guess I’m going to have to cook for the rest of my life”? Probably not. But does dressing our children in these types of clothes normalize what it means to be a girl or a boy? Yup. Like it or not, the fact that folks don’t bat an eye towards pink whisk-print pajamas means that the concept is already normalized in society. It’s accepted as regular practice. So these pajamas are not just a contributing factor to this normalization, they are also an indicator of it.

So we reinforce these gender roles by dressing our kids a certain way, so what? Does it mean that these pajamas are dooming all women to a life of cooking and cleaning for men? Nope. These pajamas put out a gender role that some women – not all – can be bound by.

My question is why would we want to reinforce something that in the past has represented a lower-valued life and absolutely stifled women, and has the potential to continue to do so?

I realize that there are exceptions to the rule – there are men who cook, there are women who love to cook or bake, and there are tons of women who don’t cook at all – but we're not talking about the exceptions here. How many women have to be affected by this to make it important? Because LOTS of them have been. The historical implications combined with the fact that some women are still bound by this stereotype makes these pajamas inappropriate.

When I was a toddler, I had some blue footsie pajamas with pictures of spaceships and astronauts on them.

Which explains why at this very moment, I'm writing from a big rocket buzzing around Uranus.

A little off topic, but- drudgery? A stereotype can be negative without the activity being bad. It's not that we shouldn't be teaching girls to cook because it's 'drudgery', but that we should be teaching *all children* to cook because it's a life skill.

Which is the issue here- not the encouraging of girls to cook, but the fact there isn't an equivalent here coded male or, better yet, unisex, with more than the whole pink/blue binary.

I totally understand the complaint about it being pink and enforcing gender roles, but I'm really offended by the description of cooking as drudgery.

@ Erica, watch your own stereotyping. I don't think of cooking as drudgery and your right, I'm not a mom, but I am a dad. A stay-at-home dad who does most of the cooking.

@Gen

A little off topic, but- drudgery? A stereotype can be negative without the activity being bad. It’s not that we shouldn’t be teaching girls to cook because it’s ‘drudgery’, but that we should be teaching *all children* to cook because it’s a life skill.

Thank you!

@Thaddeus

I totally understand the complaint about it being pink and enforcing gender roles, but I’m really offended by the description of cooking as drudgery.

@ Erica, watch your own stereotyping. I don’t think of cooking as drudgery and your right, I’m not a mom, but I am a dad. A stay-at-home dad who does most of the cooking.

Seconded. I cook and love it. And I'm a mom, so Erica's statement "If you think cooking isn’t drudgery, you aren’t a mom, lol!" makes no sense to me. I'm insulted hearing what I do daily and what I like doing - and what HAS to be done, hello, everyone eats! - called "drudgery".

What's "drudgery" is being raised EXPECTED to cook and clean and manage the house, and then to have those efforts (if one ends up in those roles) diminished and sneered at as "less than". Cooking isn't the problem. As a commenter referenced, it should be presented to all as a life skill, and one that shouldn't be expected in one gender or sex more than another.

For a slight off-topic venting session: I'm so tired of hearing cooking, cleaning etc - all necessary functions of life and ones I do daily - diminished and put-down. Often. On this blog and the other feminist blogs I read. I wish people would think a little harder before committing these words to print and online.

OK, back to the larger point: I really, really appreciate the posts here on Soc. Images - I appreciate past posts on this blog (I recently got a chuckle linking to "It's So Easy, Only A Mom Can Do It!". We are definitely still socializing our girls along the lines of, "You'll grow up and be responsible to cook and clean for a man and you'll LIKE it!" and that does need calling-out. I fight it tooth and nail.

The little blue jammies had no such future drudgery on them? What store was this, that didn't have little blue jammies printed with trucks? Or printed with hand tools? Or showing cutesified tractors and farm animals? I see that sort of thing all the time, and it's usually male-identified. In the context of toys and baby clothes, a truck is powerful and goes places...but a grown man driving a truck is doing a boring job involving some physical risk and not much respect.

Why are whisks and rolling pins more a sign of "drudgery" than drills and hammers? It's possible to not to either kind of craft at all, or to do one as a hobby only when and if a person feels like it. Even though my great-grandmother on the farm HAD to cook every day, and my great-grandfather on the farm HAD to do a lot of woodworking and home repair, they weren't doing it because of little pink sleepers. (As it happened, great-grandma taught her sons to cook because she needed the help.)

When I was a little girl in the early 1970s, I had a shirt with tools printed on it. I LOVED it. There was a whole set of coordinated outfits. My brother and I both had the shirts, and he had green pants and I had a green skirt that matched them. (With little hammers embossed on the snaps.)

What bothers me is the idea that girls aren't seeing enough variety of things they might do, of roles they might play. Sure, baby clothes with whisks are fine. Cooking is a perfectly fine craft. But I ALSO want to see baby clothes with woodworking tools. And some with microscopes and plants, or with telescopes and stars. And some with musical instruments. Babies are mostly potential, after all.

Just to provide some contrast, here's a pic of my son (5 now, 4 in the picture), who loves cooking, and who is wearing his Thomas the Train apron we got for him at Goodwill:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v643/vajrabot/chef_tenzin.jpg

I know Thomas is a show boys and girls like, but the blue color plus trains makes me think this is an apron designed specifically for boys.

I don't see this as social programming as much as it's responding to a demand for "cute". If it doesn't sell to Moms, Joe Fresh won't make any more.

I buy a lot of my daughter's clothing in the "boys" department.

The fact that we would call the "mundane tasks" that sustain our daily lives "drugery" says as much to me as these pajamas do about our societal values.

Drudgery!

oh come on! as if cooking were something minor and implied subservience! love the jammies personally.

I used to teach elementary students, and found it disturbing that 80% of girls in my classes unequivocally declared their favourite colour to be pink. Boys giggled and rolled their eyes when they heard this.

I see nothing wrong with this sleeper, except for the fact it's created for girls. I dare a boy's mom to tell me that her son wears pink sleepers adorned with cooking utensils. Progressive, socially conscious moms of girls enjoy dispelling gender stereotypes by giving their daughters masculine names, and dressing them in blue, not pink. They encourage their daughters to play with robots, and trucks and cars and trains, and try to instill in their daughters the idea that they can do anything which boys can do. Can that not be reversed?

I haven't met too many boys named Madeline, Susan or Elizabeth. Yes, the occasional boy has a barbie, but do they have the matching dollhouse, or dress-up chest, or barbie kitchen, and do their dads play dress up and have tea time with them? I doubt it.

Encouraging young women to break free of gender stereotypes can't be successful when the message we send is that traditional female roles are not necessarily a bad thing, but girls can and should aspire to the male ones too, because they're better, stronger, and prove something. Not unless boys are encouraged to explore traditional female roles and stereotypes without negative connotations.

So go ahead Erica. Buy the pink cooking utensil sleeper, then take your son outside in it. When people stop you to tell you that your daughter's adorable, correct them and brush off their appalled reactions.

I looked hard in the picture for a sign that said "for girls only". But I don't see one. I reread the post to see if there was any mention of why we are to believe these are for girls. But I don't see it.

So, why is the discussion about the issue of what print is on the pink pjs but it fails to recognize that the discussion is based on OUR assumption that these are for girls because they are pink. There is nothing in the post that says that these were found in a "girls" section of the store. The picture doesn't even show them next to some dresses. Just a pair of yellow pjs.

Perhaps in the email from Erica to Lisa, Erica said, "this was in a section of the store labeled girls", but it isn't stated in this post. Which means that the conclusion these were for girls was made by either the photo submitter, the blogger, or the first commenter on this blog. I find that interesting.

@Gregory: And the one thing I ABSOLUTELY HATED about white collar jobs was this whole feminizing type atmosphere...
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You know, your remark gave me a lot of food for thought. I keep twirling the question around in my mind--is this a feminizing aspect of work? I also think it's part of the "get along to go along" ethos of modern corporations.

I keep thinking of the inherently machiavelian HR goons who foist every single social engineering noose around our necks to make everyone "conform to working as a team" (outwardly at least), and love everyone in their work environment more, and consequently produce more. But I have also seen this "either you socialize or you'll be (very) punished" in other hierarchical levels of workers, not just white collar jobs.

I totally agree with you that it's hell, though.

And the women? So many women continue to be just so stupid and nasty as people, but now they work. Pfff

This post has unleashed a perfect storm of mansplaining, derailing, and trolling - quite the web-sociology lab we've got here.

In response to the male / female workplace dynamics thing, I wanted to put in my two cents.
First, in addition to "blue collar" trade jobs, there are entire class of low-status jobs which are primarily female: service jobs. And service workers are often expected to be friendly, if not to each other, than definitely for their customers. I flashed more fake smiles in one summer working the register in a neighborhood bake shop than I've done in the entire rest of my life put together. So, fake friendliness isn't just a booby prize for getting into a high-status job, and it's not always something women cultivate for the fun of it.

Second, my work is in abstract math, where collaboration and sharing ideas is very important. I participated in a research program last summer, where the organizers made a concerted effort to create friendly relationships among the participants. Not everyone liked this, of course, and some people refused to play along. But for those of us who did, it was actively helpful to have a "friendly" environment in our workspace. Because we all worked to be friendly, we were able to collaborate very effectively. I genuinely believe that the contrived friendliness made the project more pleasant for most of us, and made our team more productive.

If it's drudgery, ur doin it wrong.